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Former aides to Vice President Kamala Harris say she terrorized them in a hostile work environment, pursuing a model that dates back to her time as a San Francisco prosecutor.
Critics of Harris’ management haven’t stopped her from moving from attorney to attorney general of California to U.S. senator from the country’s most populous state to presidential candidate to vice-president.
Two senior executives from his vice-presidential office recently announced their departure, in a way some former employees know them.
“Look, it’s a matter of results,” a senior Democratic official told the Washington Examiner after recent allegations broke. “And the bottom line is that the VP has challenges with staff wherever she is.”
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Criticisms of Harris’ management style have taken on new significance, however, as she is well positioned to be the Democratic presidential candidate at some point in the future. President Joe Biden, already the oldest person to ever hold the post, will be 81 in 2024.
Presidential historian David Greenberg, who wrote Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American President, said it was too early to say whether the claims will weigh on Harris’ future electoral prospects.
“Nothing in the news will matter in 2024. If these reports are correct, Harris has plenty of time to correct them, and more important things will happen before that,” Greenberg said, calling them allegations of “pure inside baseball”.
According to Business Insider, however, these issues have been around for years.
Barbara O’Connor, professor of communications at California State University, Sacramento, told the outlet that at least 20 interns who had worked in Harris’ attorney general and Senate offices came to her tearfully for advice. O’Connor said she helped several of them leave Harris’ office at the time.
There were also high monetary value settlements related to the former staff of the veep.
In 2011, a settlement was reached between the California Department of Justice and a senior attorney general Harris at the time. Upon leaving, Terri Carbaugh, Deputy Chief Attorney General, signed a non-disclosure agreement and received a settlement of $ 34,900, an amount just under the $ 35,000 limit that would have required ministry approval. of State Finances.
A spokesperson for Harris said last July that Harris would support Carbaugh’s release from the nondisclosure agreement if the former staff member so wished.
After the Sacramento Bee demanded in 2018 about $ 400,000 that the California Department of Justice paid to settle a sexual harassment and reprisal lawsuit involving a longtime aide, the staff member resigned.
Harris’s office declined to respond to specific allegations, but in a statement to Insider, a spokeswoman for Harris, Sabrina Singh, said:
“The vice president and her office are focused on the Biden-Harris administration’s agenda to build a middle-up, not top-down economy,” Singh said. “Ensuring racial equity is at the heart of everything the administration does, tackling the existential threat of climate change, and continuing to protect the American people from the Covid-19 pandemic. “
After Politico described “a tense and at times austere office atmosphere” in which “ideas are ignored or met with harsh layoffs and decisions dragged out,” a former staff member said the story had traveled. ” like wildfire “. This person sent the report to their therapist, along with a note that read, “Rarely in life are we publicly justified,” according to Insider. They told the publication they were seeking therapy to “resolve the trauma of workplace abuse” after finding out that Harris would be Biden’s running mate.
Earlier this month, reports noted deep frustration with Harris’ current chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, a longtime Democratic activist who served in the White House under the former President Bill Clinton.
Flournoy is said to have isolated Harris from donors and longtime friends.
Democrats and former advisers have defended Flournoy, telling the Washington Examiner: “It feels like Tina Flournoy’s intentions are good, which is to clean up some of the mess and keep the addicts away.”
This person focused on the executive: “The common thread running through all of the internal struggles and divides, with all of Kamala Harris’s different centers of power, is Vice President Harris.”
The news was “not surprising,” the person added. “Harris’s inner circles, and I’ll use that plural because they’ve been different inner circles in California, in his Senate office, in his presidential campaign, and now in his vice-presidential campaign. [and] in power, they have always been plagued by a lot of dissension and a lot of internal quarrels. It’s probably a little unfair to say it’s just her. But she is a common denominator in all of these situations.
According to Insider, a former staff member reached out to another to say, “Poor Tina.” Another replied, “I know lol everybody’s pointing their finger when it’s obvi KDH,” using the vice-president’s initials.
A former Harris associate recently told the Washington Examiner that he was not surprised to see the vice president under the microscope.
“I hope this is a wake-up call,” he said, pointing to what he called “self-inflicted injuries”.
“She takes on incredibly complex issues and is under the microscope like never before in her career. So this kind of treatment comes with the territory, ”he added. “But she really can’t afford the self-inflicted injuries because they will distract from the important work she has ahead of her.”
Biden promised early on to fire the employees if he learned they were treating others badly.
“I’ll fire you right away,” Biden told staff at a swearing-in ceremony shortly after taking office. He argued this when a senior White House communications official verbally assaulted a reporter.
Asked about some of the accusations during a press briefing this month, press secretary Jen Psaki objected.
“I try not to speak or engage in anonymous reports or anonymous sources,” she said, adding: “I will say that the vice president is an extremely important partner for the president. . “
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“She has a tough job, a tough job. And she has a great support team around her, ”Psaki said. “But other than that, I won’t have any more comments on these reports. “
Speaking to Axios, Cedric Richmond, one of Biden’s top advisers, blamed the stories on a “whispering campaign designed to sabotage her.”
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Keywords: News, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, White House, Biden Administration
Original author: Catherine doyle
Original location: ‘Coherent thread’: Harris staff complaints predate his vice presidency
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